With school all done for the year, I thought I'd celebrate the start of summer with a trip to Maryland. There, I partook in a wonderful summer program organized by the youth division of the Maryland Ornithological Society. A week long in June, the nine selected participants had the chance to learn about data entry using eBird, birding by ear and by habitat, bird banding, ornithology as a career, and much more...
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| Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge salt marsh. |
The group did lots of birding. One day, we visited Bombay Hook NWR in Delaware. I was amazed; as far as the eye could see, there was salt marsh. In Ontario, this habitat does not exist at all. So, within the next few minutes of entering the park, I was taken aback at the three species I had just acquired to my life list: Clapper Rail, Seaside Sparrow, and Black Skimmer. The marsh was humming with cicadas, dragonflies, and of course, horse flies. All around me was life.
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| Young Marsh Wren just under its nest. |
What particularly caught my attention about all of this were the loud, singing Marsh Wrens that constantly fluttered across the boardwalk trail. I observed them for a while - from where I was standing, I counted four nests! From the closest one, I could see several wrens poking their heads out, peeping and begging their parents for some juicy bugs. Inadvertently, I noticed a snake creeping up around the reeds, getting alarmingly close to the nest. Snap - just as it suddenly went for the young, the fledglings hopped out of the way. I had just witnessed the accidental fledging of Marsh Wrens!
That Friday, the group went to Chino farms to watch a grassland bird banding operation. The project has been continuing for several years throughout the summer. We observed a variety of species being caught in mist nets, untangled, weighed, measured, banded, and released. Some species that spend a lot of time in shrubs and thickets have a lot of embedded ticks, so the banders carefully removed them with tweezers and disposed of them. Interestingly, one thrasher that was banded had almost twenty ticks on his head!
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| A Ruby-throated Hummingbird |
It was a pleasure to see these birds up so close and personal. Still, I was a little uncomfortable looking on as the banders set the birds upside down into a tube to be weighed. (Please check out my video of a Gray Catbird being weighed below.) However, I was reassured that bird banding is done safely, and birds are definitely not harmed during the process.
My trip to Maryland was amazing, and it inspired me to become a better birder. Now, I regularly sketch birds from observation and I keep a field notebook of all noteworthy plants and animals I encounter. Additionally, I plan on having more regular blog posts!
